


Lay it Down (and Take it Up Again)

by sanidine



Series: Prompts & Kinkmeme Fills [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: twd_kinkmeme, Crossover, Gen, Magic Revealed, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 10:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6467092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanidine/pseuds/sanidine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Voldemort’s forces had managed to invent – Glenn didn’t think invent was the right word, more like metastasize - a new form of Imperius. It was strong dark magic, real Renaissance era shit.</p><p>(Originally posted to twd_kinkmeme on 11-15-2011)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Glenn

The facts, at least as Glenn knows them, are thus.  
  
Voldemort’s forces had managed to invent – Glenn didn’t think invent was the right word, more like _metastasize_ \- a new form of Imperius. It was strong dark magic, real Renaissance era shit, that had probably cost the Death Eaters the lives of their most powerful execrationists to develop. The Magical Intelligence Bureau (Glenn couldn’t help but laugh the first time he saw the acronym. His parents had been big into Muggle movies) hadn’t managed to get much more than a few basic details out of their overseas informants before Britain had fallen completely. The last transmissions from surviving members of the Ministry told stories of powerful casters controlling hundreds of Muggles at once, setting them on magical auto-pilot to destroy anything that moved. Glenn had heard that, at first, the Aurors hadn’t thought it was necessary to throw anything stronger than a jellylegs of a _Petrificus Totalus_ into the advancing crowds of geeks.   
  
They had been overwhelmed, torn apart. Nobody had managed to discover what the Death Eaters were doing to jam Apparition capabilities.  
  
Glenn knows that the curse is also, apparently, unbreakable. Whenever the Aurors had managed to kill or disrupt one of the casters, those that had previously been controlled simply fell to the ground, unresponsive, staring blankly at the ground or the sky or the cities of Europe as they burned. Rumor had it that the geeks’ humanity would be restored once Voldemort was dead but Glenn doubted it. Believing in rumors like that had held the country immobile until it was too late. After all, the British Ministry had claimed under blood-oath to have a Level 5c Prophesy guaranteeing Voldemort’s downfall.   
  
Ha. So much for destiny and chosen children.  
  
Glenn knows the facts, and he even manages to trick himself into thinking he’s prepared for his assignment to the Atlanta resistance. He manages to believe that little bit of self deception right up until he stumbles out of the campfire Floo and sees the smoke rising from the city in the distance, the leering death’s head hovering over the city where he was born and raised.  
  
Then the spell hits him, knocking him backwards and into unconsciousness, and Glenn doesn’t think anything at all.


	2. Daryl

Daryl Dixon has known that he’s a freak since he was seven years old. He first realized it after he turned an empty beer bottle into the world’s nastiest loaf of bread when there wasn’t any food in the trailer. His first instinct had been to tell Merle, but Daryl (despite what his brother always told him) had enough wits to know when he was being a stupid fuck. The Dixons didn’t take kindly to freaks and Daryl figured that what he’d just done put him pretty firmly into that category. So he didn’t tell anybody, and he kept it to himself when he fell out of a tree and bounced harmlessly or how his shell casings sometimes seemed to float in mid-air after he fired his rifle.

He’d done a good job of ignoring it up until the end of sixth grade, when Daryl had been called to the counselor’s office only to find a short man with the world’s bushiest eyebrows standing behind Mrs. Lewis’ desk. Daryl assumed that the man was from CPS, right up until he sat down and notices that the winged hourglasses on the guy’s tie were actually fluttering around on the fabric. The short conversation that followed started with the man saying that Daryl had a gift, and ended with Daryl telling him exactly where he could stick his ‘magical school’ bullshit.

Daryl wasn’t going to let anybody take him away from his brother. It didn’t matter if they were counselors or social workers or weird fucking wizards. 

Everything was alright for a while (or, as alright as things ever were in the Dixon household) but that summer Daryl realized that he couldn’t simply ignore his freakishness anymore. It bubbled in his blood like hot tar, crackled across his skin like errant electricity, made not acting almost unbearable. Daryl took to practicing in secret after one memorable night when everything inside the trailer (including him and Merle) was suddenly released from the confines of gravity for a few hours. 

Merle had been on shrooms at the time, and had talked for days about how great of a trip it had been, had probably told everybody in the county lockup about it too. After his brother had gotten picked up for aggravated assault no more than a week later, and while Daryl had been left alone to fend for himself (like always), Merle’s absence also gave him plenty of opportunities to try and learn to control his so-called ‘gift.’

Daryl had always been told that he wasn’t very smart, knew that he wasn’t good at much besides hunting and tracking and getting in the way. Magic was no exception. Saying ’hocus pocus’ or ’abracadabra’ didn’t do shit, and waving sticks around just made him feel like a bigger idiot. What Daryl did end up learning happened mostly by accident, in moments of desperation or frustration that somehow made it easier to force his will. It wasn’t that he wanted to do it, to be a freak. He didn’t. But he didn’t have much choice. It was easier to hide the fact that he disappeared into the woods for hours at a time than it would be to try and explain if Merle wasn’t tripping balls the next time Daryl fucked up.

Teaching himself to do anything took years, much longer than that first, disastrous summer in which he mostly blew up tree stumps accidently (and it was a damn good thing they lived so far from town). Eventually, though, Daryl learned to do little things that made his life bearable, made the energy simmering under his skin a little easier to control. He could light a fire by snapping his fingers or make it go out by waving his hand. He could stun animals (although he preferred to hunt the old fashioned way, using the magic seemed like cheating), and he could make them gut and skin themselves while he stood under the cypress and smoked. He could change things into other things sometimes, and he learned that he could call things to him from across rooms, which was super useful for when he was drinking alone and didn’t want to get up to get another beer.

Other than his weekly forays into the woods, however, Daryl’s life didn’t change. He was still a Dixon. He managed to graduate high school by the skin of his teeth. Their dad had a heart attack at a bar and died and was buried and changed nothing with his absence. Daryl went to work at a motorcycle shop with one of his buddies. Merle mostly dealt crystal in between trips to jail. 

And then the world went to shit and Daryl found himself breaking his brother out of jail amidst the chaos, trying to explain to Merle why he could throw light from his hands. People were screaming on the radio about terrorist attacks and a zombie virus, and they didn’t know at first that the walkers weren’t actually dead or infected. Daryl didn’t know, and he and Merle put arrows and bullets into any of the white-eyed walkers that approached them. He tried not to think about it too much, about how after they found Shane’s group Daryl learned that he had been killing innocent people for weeks when a simple stun would have sufficed.

Being at the resistance camp is the first time in his life that Daryl has been around other wizards magic users freaks like himself. But Daryl sees the looks that the group gives him when they learn that he didn’t go to any type of magic school, hears the quiet noises of surprise and disdain when he tells them that he doesn’t need a fucking wand. They’re speaking English, but it’s like an entirely different language, a whole culture he had no idea even existed. Daryl knows that he isn’t like them.

So he does what he’s always done and sticks by his brother. Daryl doesn’t say anything when Merle sets their tent up next to Ed, who only recently found out that his little girl has magic and is revolted by the idea. Merle doesn’t like any of it either, and spends most of his time hunting in the woods. He calls Daryl a ‘white trash wizard’ whenever he sees his brother do anything magical, so Daryl stops. It’s not like he has anything in common with the others in the resistance camp anyways, has no idea what the fuck Quidditch is, or why anybody would want to use birds to send letters.

There’s about a billion things Daryl has no idea about, one of which is that it’s apparently fine for random guys to just appear in fires like it’s not a big deal.

**Author's Note:**

> Never finished this one, but I liked the idea a lot.
> 
> Original Prompt:  
> Instead of zombie attacks, let's say that Rick and Lori and Shane are powerful wizards and witches dealing with Voldemort's attack on America (maybe Harry didn't stop him in this verse, so Voldemort was able to come across the ocean and start causing havoc there, too!) 
> 
> The American wizarding school can be as alike or as different to Hogwarts as you like, but I'd like these elements:
> 
> Someone in the group is or becomes a Death Eater  
> Someone in the group is a Muggle and discovers the magical world through this event  
> Daryl has very powerful magic, despite being homeschooled in it.  
> The different kinds of wands each person has (EG, Shane's might be 11 1/2 inches, Ash, Dragonheart string)  
> Glenn has just finished his magical studies  
> no robes. I think JKR said that American witches and wizards are a bit better at blending with Muggles and I'd like to see that.


End file.
